Here’s Mobile Europe’s video of ip.access’ Femtocell Industry Award winning ‘virtual fridge notes’ demo, shown at last week’s Femtocells World Summit in London.

More Mobile Europe videos from the event can be found here.

Some brief notes on other announcements from last week…

Femtocell Industry Awards 2009

The winners of the Femto Forum’s inaugural Femtocell Industry Awards were announced at a dazzling gala dinner.  ip.access picked up awards for the nano3G picocell / enterprise femtocell (in the design and technology innovation category) and for our Facebook virtual fridge notes demo (in the femtocell service category).  Other award winners included NEC, Sprint, Cellcom, picoChip, SoftBank, and individual awards for Taka Yoshizawa and Chris Fenton.

ABI forecasts 366,000 picocells by 2013

ABI Research estimates that in 2013, there will have been cumulative deployments of about 366,000 picocells worldwide, representing 38% CAGR from 2008.  ABI recently published separate reports on picocells and “super-femtocells”, with a higher forecast for the latter.  However, in practice it’s not clear whether there is any distinction between picocells and super-femtocells.

Percello shows PRC6000

At the Femtocells World Summit, Percello demonstrated live calls on their PRC6000 chip using a Ubiquisys AP.  Yoav Volloch (one of the industry’s great enthusiasts) took me up to the Percello demo suite, where the 16-user PRC6500 was also on display.  Yoav showed me 8 simultaneous calls and HSDPA at 9.4 Mbps, with software for the demos provided by Node H.

Texas Instruments announced femto silicon

Texas Instruments has unveiled two new femtocell chipsets based on scaled down macro basestation DSPs.  The new residential femto DSP is a dual-core processor that can support eight simultaneous users, while the enterprise femto architecture is a triple-core DSP supporting up to 32 simultaneous calls.  Caroline Gabriel gives a great analysis here.

Ubiquisys announces picocell

Ubiquisys has announced their G3 enterprise femtocell (i.e. picocell), based on Percello’s Aquilo PRC6000 chip.  The G3 will support up to eight simultaneous users and HSPA+ data at 21.6  /5.7 Mbps.  There will also be a future version supporting up to 16 users (based on the PRC6500 chip).  Shipments of the G3 femtocell will start from Q4 2009.

In other news…

• Huawei shows off “funky femtos”.
• IntelliNet announces Iu-h compliant femto gateway.
• Airvana announces partnership with VeriSign for femto security…
• …and comments on NSN’s acquisition of Nortel assets.
• Femtocells – the need for speed, and life in the fast lane.
• Another Finnish operator to launch UMTS 900 – TeliaSonera follows Elisa’s lead.
• Mobile data not yet essential for Americans.
• Think Femtocell report on Day 1, Day 2 & Day 3 of the Femtocells World Summit.

Femtocell applications & services

Femto Forum announces Services SIG

The Femto Forum has announced the creation of a Special Interest Group (SIG) with a mission to develop a framework that will simplify the creation and deployment of femtocell applications.  The aim is to ensure application developers can use a common development environment to build femtocell services that work with any femtocell on any network.  In order to achieve this, the Femto Forum recognises the need to work with existing standards bodies to incorporate femtocell APIs, rather than reinventing the wheel.

Fierce Wireless worries that such industry groups “have a track record of becoming political battlegrounds as rival vendors promote their solutions over those from other members”.  But in this case the vendors in question don’t have any particular axe to grind.  Our business is network infrastructure, not applications, and we will all benefit if compelling femto services create more demand from operators and consumers for our products.

Airvana, ip.access & Ubiquisys pledge support

As if to calm Fierce Wireless’ concerns, Airvana, ip.access and Ubiquisys have jointly pledged to support the Services SIG.  The three companies have already begun working together to advance the goals of the SIG. This is genuine, folks.

Services demos at the Femtocell Applications Live event

One goal of the Services SIG is to promote the potential of femtocell applications and their significance to operators, application developers and consumers.  The first initiative in this area was the Femtocell Applications Live event which took place as part of the Femtocells World Summit.

Nine vendors and one operator joined forces to demonstrate example applications illustrating the four key femtocell attributes which can be used to create or enhance applications:

• Femtocells know who is at home, and can trigger events when household members arrive at home.  (This is different from other location services which know x,y coordinates but not the significance of a particular location being “home”.)
• Femtocells offer a faster, cheaper data connection than the macro network, making an ideal environment for applications to transfer large amounts of data (such as podcast downloads or video uploads).
• Femtocells act as a bridge between the mobile and home networks (local break-out), giving the mobile handset secure access to all other ‘connected’ devices on the home LAN for media sharing and data sync.
• Femtocells can act as a trusted node for access to the home LAN from the macro network (local break-in), allowing users to remotely connect to devices and content on their home network from anywhere outside the home.

Unstrung’s Michelle Donegan provides a great summary of the applications on show here, and Zahid Ghadialy gives an excellent blow-by-blow illustrated account of the whole event on his 3G and 4G Wireless Blog.  Caroline Gabriel also gives a nice write-up at Rethink Wireless.

The Femtocell Applications Live event was even covered by Business Week, which latched onto the idea that femtocells might one day have app stores.  What they didn’t pick up is that this is only the case for apps running on the femtocell AP itself.  Femtocell apps running on handsets will be able to use existing app stores, and those running in the network will work on any handset without needing a download.

Not everyone was completely convinced.  Dean Bubley suggests that applications must provide access for the entire user base, and will therefore need lots of ways of getting “at home” triggers, including femto-based presence, GPS, WiFi and network location APIs.  Bill Ray at The Register was rather sceptical about the demos, and Duncan Geere accused one of being “delightfully insane” (which I suggest should be taken as a compliment).

But Ovum’s Jeremy Green was especially critical, commenting that “few of the applications demonstrated appear compelling or even useful”.  Actually I think he’s wrong, but this misses the point.  With the exception of Intrinsyc and Mobica (whose apps did seem compelling and useful to me), the rest of the companies demonstrating at the event were infrastructure vendors, not application developers.  The demos were designed only to illustrate the potential of femtocells as a platform which can be used by real application developers to build much more compelling and useful applications.

Having said that, I am quite proud of the ip.access Facebook Virtual Fridge Notes application, which won the Femtocell Industry Award for best femtocell service.  Our new iPhone application, shown for the first time at Femtocell Applications Live event, even displays the incoming reminder messages on a realistic-looking virtual fridge.

Operator news from the Femtocells World Summit

It’s been a big week for femto news on the back of the Femtocells World Summit in London.

Vodafone announces UK consumer femto launch

Vodafone opened the Femtocells World Summit by announcing that the Vodafone Access Gateway will be available in the UK from 1^st July.  The device is a standalone 3G femtocell access point from Alcatel-Lucent and Sagem, which has already been tested over multiple ISPs’ broadband connections in trials with over 1000 users.

The Vodafone Access Gateway will initially be pitched as a simple solution for 3G coverage issues at home, and will be available on a variety of tariffs (including to pre-paid users):

Mobile Europe has an exclusive video interview with Lee McDougall, senior product marketing manager at Vodafone UK, who says femtocells will serve a small market (but he could hardly say otherwise without implying that Vodafone’s network offers poor coverage).

Here’s how the analysts have reacted to the news:

Mike Roberts (Informa): “This is huge for the femtocell industry.  A launch by a major operator in tough economic times shows they’re convinced there’s a strong business case for femtocells.”

Matt Hatton (Analysys Mason): “Vodafone is pitching the initial price high to skim those subscribers desperate for better in-building coverage…I’m sceptical about the level of demand in Europe though, where in-building coverage tends to be good.”

Bill Ray (The Register): “This is very much the first step for Femtocells…but Vodafone’s announcement marks the start of wide scale deployments that could see a base station in every home with remarkable speed.”

Steven Hartley (Ovum): “…a femtocell offer that is an improvement on what has gone before, but still a relatively niche offering.”

Peter Jarich (Current Analysis): “The industry-at-large may be disappointed by this service’s failure to reflect the full potential of femtocells for lower-cost, homezone services and innovative applications, but this launch does a wonderful job of identifying a real consumer problem (poor indoor 3G coverage) and fixing it with a highly strategic Trojan horse of a product.”

Steve Shaw (on UMA today): “Of course, Orange has offered its Unique service, based on Wi-Fi, in the UK for some time now…Looks like it’s Game On! for FMC in the UK.”

Even the long-time femto sceptics at Total Telecom now believe that “the tide may be turning” (although, as in the past, their opinion is based on a rather slim survey – this time one person in the office.)

There has been a sense that femtocells were going to be slow to arrive in Europe, and Vodafone’s announcement should provide real impetus.  It will be interesting to see whether it drives a competitive response from other European operators.

ATT on track for 2009 femtocell launch

AT&T’s executive director for radio access network delivery, Gordon Mansfield, told Unstrung “We’re on track for a full national launch by the end of 2009.”  In the coming weeks, he said AT&T “will expand [their consumer trials] into a marketing trial of the 3G Microcell, which will be open to customers through our AT&T stores…in a handful of cities”.  Mansfield confirmed that AT&T will launch with a standalone 3G femtocell, but is also looking at options for integrating femtocells into residential gateways.

T-Mobile International won’t be pushed into femto launch

T-Mobile International’s senior VP of radio networks engineering Klaus-Jürgen Krath told Unstrung, “We won’t be pushed by [Vodafone’s] announcement…There is not any firm launch plan that I can disclose now.”  T-Mobile recently extended its femtocell trial in Germany and is using Huawei and Ubiquisys access points in some of its own retail shops.

Third time lucky for Orange?

Presenting at the Femtocells World Summit, Orange’s head of voice marketing Robert Swift said femtocells were Orange’s third attempt at an in-building solution for business customers.  Following failures with UMA and 2G picocells from now-defunct vendor RadioFrame Networks (unfortunate choice), 3G femtocells are next up.  Swift said Orange plans to launch femtocells in up to three key markets with two vendors involved.

“Femtocells are like crack…trial customers don’t want to give them back,” he commented.  But despite this enthusiasm, Swift was cautious about the opportunity for femtocells, arguing that the business case works well for volume deployments but that technical challenges mean operators want to begin by “dipping a toe in”.  He was also keen to point out that UMA, rather than residential femtocells, remains Orange’s strategic choice for the consumer market.

SFR worried about public health concerns

SFR’s director of network marketing Guillaume de Lavallade (another speaker at the Femtocells World Summit) said French consumers are concerned about potential health risks from cellular antennas and handsets.  “You can explain that the emitted power of femtos is 10 times less than that of WiFi, comparable to a DECT phone, and that 3G handsets emit less power when connecting to the femto than on the macro network,” he says, but “it’s difficult for an operator to take those facts and figures to the consumer.”

Following common practice across the pond, CNET immediately labelled the Vodafone Access Gateway a “mini mobile phone tower”, which apparently goes down quite well with US consumers.  However, this is unlikely to please European operators, who are generally much more concerned about media scare-mongers playing on the health issue.

The Femto Forum, GSMA and MMF have published a paper explaining the facts about femtocells and public health.

First Iu-h demo

picoChip, Starent and Continuous Computing are set to show the world’s first demonstration of the new 3GPP Iu-h standard.  picoChip is supplying the femtocell silicon and PHY software for the Access Point, Continuous Computing is supplying the femto software stacks for the AP and Starent is supplying the femto gateway.  The demo will be shown at next week’s Femtocells World Summit in London.

ABI Research senior analyst Aditya Kaul says that a demonstration of interoperability at such an early stage in the standardisation process “indicates the level of commitment that the femtocell ecosystem has in working together.”

The demo is an important step towards real-world interoperability.  Implementation of the R8 Iu-h radio standard is one of the key requirements for this.  Another is OAM TR-196 compliance for provisioning and management.  Also key to success will be the incorporation of real-world deployment experience in the evolution of the standard.  Today’s pre-standard solutions, which offer advanced features to meet operator requirements that go beyond what is currently included in Iu-h, are being adapted to incorporate the evolving Iu-h standard without losing important functionality.

P2P vs. femtocells

Wireless evangelist Nick Hunn sees femtocells offering a simple way for us to get large volumes of content on and off our mobile phones (e.g. onto PCs and other devices connected to the home network).  This puts femtocells in direct competition with high-speed peer-to-peer technologies based on Bluetooth and WiFi or UWB.

Hunn believes the jury is still out on the question of whether anyone is interested: “high speed peer to peer, particularly if it involves learning a new interface, may be still-born”.  But this is where femtocells come in – they make things simpler by not requiring a new interface.  “If a femtocell makes something simple, users will ignore the alternative of Wi-Fi, which could remove the need for Wi-Fi in a handset,” says Hunn.  “And there’s nothing else to keep Wi-Fi if an alternative, compelling download content interface and delivery mechanism appears.   [Femtocells] feel like a technology far more open for technical and service evolution that peer-to-peer.”

Forecasts great and small…

Cellular News highlights a recent IDATE report forecasting that the femtocell market will generate € 875 million in revenues for Service Providers by 2013 from 9.7 million shipped units.  Other predictions include:

• Service providers will spend over € 734 million by 2013 for femtocell equipment
• The USA will account for about 50 % of CPE shipped at the end of 2013, with the remainder of the market shared roughly equally between Asia and Western Europe.

IDATE’s Mathieu Limousi says the forecasts are quite conservative because “the added value a femtocell solution offers is too low in the eyes of end users,” and “femtocell mass market adoption conditions are not fulfilled yet.”

A more optimistic forecast was released by Juniper Research this week.  Their figure for femtocell service revenues by 2014 is a whopping $9bn, with Access Point shipments reaching multi million unit quantities over the next two to three years.  The report concludes that “femtocells are a winning strategy for Mobile Network Operators”.

Writing on the Juniper Research blog, the report’s author Howard Wilcox says that having a femtocell integrated with a home gateway, combined with attractive tariffs and femto services will make “subscribing to the femtocell service irresistible!”

Picocells & femtocells win GTB awards

ip.access and Blue Ocean Wireless have won a Global Telecom Business Innovation Award for wireless network infrastructure innovation.  Blue Ocean’s global service uses ip.access nanoGSM picocells on commercial ships to provide on-board mobile phone connectivity to merchant seafarers.

Meanwhile, Huawei also won a Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award for indoor residential services innovation, for StarHub’s femtocell project in Singapore.

More femto FUD

Following last week’s warnings from Epitiro, another test equipment vendor is playing up concerns about femtocell performance in real-world networks.  Tektronix president Rich McBee says femtocells will be “exposed to external factors unforeseen by traditional network elements”.  Of course, it’s just possible that he wants to highlight the significance of Tektronix’s new femtocell monitoring system.

Mobile data explosion – not just for smartphones

The GSMA has predicted that social networking will grow explosively over mobile networks, and this is borne out by figures published this week by INQ Mobile.  INQ makes a low-end 3G handset for the 3 network in the UK.  The figures show that INQ handset owners are aggressively using social networking applications, mobile email and instant messaging in a manner normally expected of smartphone owners.  About 65% (455,000 INQ owners) use Facebook on their phone almost every day!

Femtocells – an enterprise “F word”

Andrew Mitchell says “femtocells” are battling it out with “FMC” for the title of most used “F word” in enterprise mobility.  Femtocells appear to have the upper hand because “the femtocell platform provides the ability to extend a broad suite of enterprise applications over 4G networks…Unlike its FMC counterpart, the femtocell is not a point solution.”

Femto / pico – are we talking about the same thing?

Will Franks says it’s a false assumption that femtocells support fewer calls and have a shorter range than a picocell.  He says “enterprise femtocells can range in capacity from 8-16+ users, and each one has a range approaching today’s picocells”.  It seems to me that the long-range, 8-16+ channel enterprise femtocells that Will describes are, in fact, nothing other than today’s picocells – range and capacity (along with enterprise features) being precisely what makes them “pico” rather than “femto”.

In other news…

• Do femtocells need a bus lane on your broadband connection?
• Node H software runs on Percello chip.
• Bewan Systems announces iBox Home Gateway with built-in 3G Access Point.
• Ex-RadioFrame chief Jeff Brown takes the helm at Kineto.
• Mobile Insider disagrees with QCOM on femto interference.

Sprint offers its femtocell to MVNO and cable partners

Sprint has announced that it will white-label its AIRAVE femtocell, enabling wholesale partners to offer their own branded CDMA femtocell services.  This includes MVNOs (such as Virgin Mobile USA), as well as wireline and cable operators.

“The femtocell offering is not only a differentiator in the marketplace but is very compelling to those who want to get into the wireless business,” said Jim Patterson, president of Sprint Wholesale Solutions.

Caroline Gabriel at Rethink Wireless says “Sprint is increasingly adding new incentives to its wholesale partners.”  She believes that the greatest interest in the AIRAVE will come from wireline and cable partners because they own the broadband IP connections used to backhaul femtocell traffic.

Bernie Arnason at Telecompetitor says cable companies may be interested in the AIRAVE as a way to “maintain a telephony relationship with customers who decide they no longer need cable digital voice service,” and also as an option for targeting wireless only households who don’t need a traditional cable triple play.

Pivot, a previous attempt by Sprint to work closely with cable operators, was not a success.  However, Kevin Fitchard at Telephony Online argues that Pivot lacked a true FMC element, which a femtocell would deliver.  “A cable operator partnering with Sprint initially would resell the Sprint CDMA service inside and outside the home, but eventually such a partnership could result in a converged home-mobile line with a single number.”

As Mike Smith, director of marketing for Sprint Wholesale puts it, “We’re really just now on the forefront of understanding what femtocells can do for converged communications.”

Vodafone Qatar to deploy picocells and femtocells

New operator Vodafone Qatar is gearing up for full launch, but still needs a good solution for indoor coverage.  After its rivals refused a request to share their existing indoor network infrastructure, Vodafone faces the costly task of building out its own indoor systems.  The company has chosen to use picocells and femtocells as part of the plan, which should reduce the cost substantially compared to traditional approaches (see “Picocells Save You Money”).

Femtocell interference issues are solved, says Qualcomm

Operators need not be concerned about interference between femtocells if proper management techniques are implemented, claims Rasmus Hellberg, director of technical marketing with Qualcomm.  ”We do not see interference as being a roadblock to deploying 3G femtocells,” he said.

Refarming 900 MHz in Finland

Finnish mobile network operator, Elisa has begun upgrading its 900 MHz network to HSPA+.  Some have speculated that refarming 900 MHz spectrum for 3G will reduce the need for femtocells, because 900 MHz frequencies penetrate buildings better than the current 2100 MHz frequencies used for 3G in Europe.  However, in practice the two solutions largely address different needs – refarming allows operators to provide 3G coverage in rural areas without adding lots of new cell towers, whereas femtocells allow operators to add extra network capacity and give consumers their own personal 3G cells.

Furthermore, refarming 900 MHz spectrum requires the existing GSM voice traffic to be moved to higher frequencies (typically 1800 MHz), which will cause some holes in coverage, especially in buildings.  2G picocells can provide very cost-effective and targeted in-building coverage to patch these holes, thereby helping operators execute a refarming strategy.

Internet expands, mobile internet explodes

Cisco Systems forecasts that Internet traffic will increase fivefold over the next five years, driven in large part by video.  Over the same period, Cisco says mobile data traffic will increase by 66 times, with video again being the fastest growing category.

Will the mobile networks be able to cope with this data explosion?  Following last week’s warning from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that mobile operators are not ready for the deluge of data traffic generated by smartphones, this week test equipment company Epitiro has reported that UK mobile broadband performance is 75% slower than advertised.  John Tanner notes that 3G operators are already relying on Wi-Fi to keep web-based apps from eating into their network capacity.  For example, AT&T wouldn’t allow the SlingBox application onto its iPhone until it was configured to work over WiFi only, and not 3G.

But this isn’t a good state of affairs for the operators (or application developers, for that matter).  Network upgrades are high on the agenda, including femtocells which will help offload indoor smartphone users from the macro network.  Femtocell advocates believe that smartphone use will create demand for femtocells – not only operator demand (for network offload), but consumer demand as well (for a better data experience).

A few years ago we might have laughed if someone suggested we should buy a femtocell to improve the quality of mobile phone calls at home.  Why would you want to make mobile calls in the house, when there’s a higher quality, cheaper, ubiquitous alternative in the fixed line?  Now everyone agrees voice coverage is the most obvious opportunity for femtocells, with consumers up in arms if their mobile network doesn’t provide good voice service at home.  For the femtocell enthusiast, it’s equally obvious that the same thing will become true for data, where the signal quality needs to be much better than for voice.  Some are sceptical that consumers will be motivated to buy a femtocell to improve the data experience on their mobile phones at home – after all, don’t PCs and TVs provide a better, cheaper, ubiquitous alternative?  Perhaps these sceptics have failed to spot that the majority of mobile data traffic is generated at home.

More on LTE femtocells

Femtocells are reported to be one of the hottest trends in LTE.  This week, TMCnet’s Susan Campbell says, “Due to the fact that LTE requires roughly twice the number of base stations as a 3G environment, operators will need picocells and femtocells.  Both options offer a cost-effective alternative to more expensive macro cell sites”.  However, she goes on to say that planning the impact of femtocells on network capacity and performance presents a “tricky landscape to maneuver”.

In other news…

• Global mobile revenue growth falls to 3% in 1Q09 (from 8% a year ago).
• But 230,000 new basestations are planned for Brazil, Russia, India & China next year.
• Plenty of femtocell nominations for the IEC InfoVision awards.
• Femtocell interview with Rob Riordan.
• AIRAVE enthusiasm (and minor glitches).
• UK tube strike – femtocells to the rescue?

Don’t forget Femtocell Applications Live on 23 June.

AIRAVE economics

Here’s how one Sprint subscriber calculates the value of his AIRAVE femtocell:

“It was costing us $32 per month for our unlimited long distance land line and it would cost us an additional $25 per month to have the AIRAVE.  So we are saving $7 per month with the AIRAVE, with the added bonus of having great signal quality in our house.

“Now, that was just saving on the elimination of our land line if you have a large plan you may find that you don’t need as many minutes because you don’t use minutes when you are at your house…  I don’t even know how much of a savings it would be if someone was still paying per minute on long distance.”

This ties in nicely with the Femto Forum’s recent business case work (updated this week).  That “a savings” thing does bug me, though.

Femto Forum and WiMAX Forum to co-operate on femtocell standards

WiMAX operators looking to improve in-building coverage and data throughput are behind the newly announced collaboration between the WiMAX Forum and Femto Forum.  The collaboration will create standards that address QoS, provisioning, authentication, power optimisation, mobility management and other areas.

Sensational headline raises femto concerns

It’s that old chestnut again.  Test specialist Epitiro has found evidence that policy management techniques used by broadband services providers pose “a serious threat” to femtocell voice quality.  Since Epitiro first presented this about a year ago, I have been diligently scouring the blogs to find evidence of this happening in the real world.  I guess it’s still early days, but many people actually report that a femtocell gives better voice quality than the macro network.

ip.access demonstrates how picocells save money

A new white paper from ip.access explains how picocells are being used by operators around the world to save money.  Drawing on real-world experience in over 40 mobile networks, the paper outlines seven different ways that picocells help operators reduce both the capital and operational costs of their networks.

Wireless infrastructure market growing despite recession

ABI Research forecasts worldwide capital expenditure on wireless infrastructure should grow by between 1.5% and 3.7% during 2010, despite the tough economic climate.  Senior analyst Aditya Kaul says operators are looking at alternatives to traditional macro base-station deployments, including in-building wireless systems and femtocells.

Meanwhile, EJL Wireless Research says contracts for mobile basestations are down slightly from Q1 2008.  According to EJL founder Earl Lum, “demand remains heavily concentrated in Asia Pacific while Eastern Europe was the second most active region”.  3G represented 53.2% of total contracts.

Ajit Jaokar ponders femto services

In his Open gardens blog, Ajit Jaokar says it’s “hard to sell capabilities of networks themselves (or for that matter to charge for networks)”.  “Customers understand services,” he says, before going on to examine femtozone applications.  Jaokar belies that femtocells could be a valid exception to the tenet that services should not, generally, be coupled to networks.

Femtocells address Shannon’s law

Kevin Fitchard takes a critical look at femtocells in his Telephony Online article.  He acknowledges that “ultimately the only way to grow capacity will be through spectrum re-use, i.e. shrinking cells,” but questions whether femtocells are the answer.  “Millions of cheap femtocells could replicate the coverage of thousands of base stations in a metro network and add untold amounts of cheap capacity to boot, but they would create a networking planning and management nightmare,” he claims.  However, this overlooks a number of significant technology developments by the femtocell industry to address the management issue.  According to Will Franks of Ubiquisys, these advances “effectively eliminate the risk of nightmares.”

PJ Louis also sees femtocells as a potential solution to the Shannon’s limit, but objects on different grounds to Fitchard.  “The current underlying switching fabric cannot handle femtocell site deployment configuration I am describing,” he says.  “Think 5 pounds of stuff being jammed into a 10 pound bag”.  This is a new one on me, I must admit.

Are enterprise femtocells a good idea?

ADC’s VP product management John Spindler attacks the idea that multiple femtocells can be used to provide coverage in enterprises.  “Rather than using multiple femtocells, a better way to approach the problem is to use the signal from one femtocell (or “super femto”) and distribute it throughout the office with a distributed antenna system,” he argues.

Femtocell book published

Femto Forum chairman Simon Saunders has edited a new book on femtocells.  ‘Femtocells: Opportunities and Challenges for Business and Technology’ is published by Wiley.

In other news…

• Percello unveils 16-user PRC6500 SOC for enterprise-grade femtocells / picocells.
• picoChip picoXcell™ PC312 femto chip makes EETimes top 5 products of the week.
• Amit Jain says femtocells are sticky.
• David Chambers says 4G may be the first step to IMS for MNOs…
• …and explains the link between IMS and femtocells.
• LTE and femtocells are an “essential symbiosis”.

Upcoming conferences

• Femtocells World Summit, 23-25 June, London (announcement ¦ website).
• IEEE ICC conference, Dresden (femto panel ¦ website).

Have we lost interest in 3G femtocells?

Last week’s press coverage from the LTE World Summit has caused some speculation that the industry has abandoned 3G femtocells.  For example, IridiaBlog comments, “we have seen some announcements that would seem to point towards femtocells becoming part of LTE deployment rather than trying to make them an adjunct of existing networks”.

In fact, this is far from the case.  As David Chambers comments, last week’s news should be interpreted as “vendors strongly marketing their products for LTE deployment, rather than any lack of progress or potential for 3G femtocells”.  David goes on to point out “the primary argument is that massive increased data capacity can really only be delivered by very small cells – regardless of whether they are 3G or 4G – therefore femtocells should be used in both cases where very high capacity is required”.

Others see 3G as the obvious market for femtocells.  A.D. Little analyst Karim Taga emailed his thoughts following the LTE World Summit.  For Karim, “The whole point of a femto is to leverage the existing customer base using mobile handsets that can communicate with a femto access points without replacing or subsidizing new handsets” – in other words, 3G.

Applications will make femtocells “aspirational”

I’m not sure that Peter Jarich is serious about wanting an alert when his “wife / son / daughter sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night?”, but he does see genuine possibilities for using femtocells as more than just coverage and capacity extenders.  “In the same way apps have turned smartphones from business tools to consumer must-haves, apps have the power to make femtocells aspirational,” says the Current Analysis VP.  Many femtocell applications could be implemented using alternative approaches, but Jarich suggests that the femto-enabled versions will be simpler to configure and use, which is important for consumer adoption.

The Femto Forum’s Services SIG has been making good progress recently with John Cullen (ex-RadioFrame) at the helm.  The SIG’s goal is to make it easy for application developers to exploit the femtocell platform for creating new services that work across different femtocells and networks.

Femtocells part of AT&T network upgrade strategy

Just as Opera Software was reporting a 295% increase in mobile data traffic over the last year (with US consumers viewing the most data-intensive web pages), AT&T has announced a package of network upgrades designed to stay ahead of the mobile data explosion.

CEO Randall Stephenson warned the wireless industry that operators are not prepared for the deluge of data that increased smartphone use will bring to their networks, and predicted that this would cause churn.  “If you look at reasons for churn in our industry, the No. 1 reason is network quality,” he said.

AT&T’s plans include upgrading its 3G network to HSPA starting this year, with LTE rollouts to follow in 2011.  Femtocells also feature on the carrier’s plans to drive its mobile broadband strategy forward.  There’s some good discussion of AT&T’s plans here.

Femtocell frenzy at Mobile Business

Mobile Business magazine gives a round-up of the femto world with some wise words from the industry gurus.  (And me.)

In other news…

• Think Femtocell explains the basics of SIP…
• …and says that several operators are gearing up for commercial femtocell launches.
• Another go round the old femto-FON business model idea.
• Josh Adelson and David Nowicki consider the point of 4G femtocells.

Case for LTE femtocells

Femto Forum chairman Simon Saunders laid out the case for LTE femtocells at the LTE World Summit in Berlin.  In a nutshell, maximising spectrum re-use they will ensure more users receive peak data rates more of the time, especially inside buildings.  “By adopting femtocells operators can roll out a much better performing LTE network than they could with macro base stations alone and at a lower cost and with less risk,” said Saunders.

Current Analysis VP Peter Jarich concurs: “[With LTE] you need small cells. That could be femtocells, picocells or whatever,” he says.  Unstrung chatted to executives from T-Mobile and Telenor at the same event, and found a generally positive response to the concept of LTE femtocells.  According to picoChip’s Rupert Baines, the first femtocells in LTE networks won’t be deployed in the home environment, but at offices, coffee shops and airports and will compete with Wi-Fi based hotspots.

Dean Bubley is skeptical about LTE as a whole (notably issues with voice service and the business case), and hints that 3G femtocells may be a more sensible solution to the problem of heavy data users.   “What’s certainly not obvious to me is that the 5% of heavy HSPA users suddenly become profitable if you give them LTE instead,” says Bubley.  “Why not just give them a [HSPA] femtocell for use at home, implement strict caps, or just get rid of them entirely?”

But operators do seem rather keen on LTE, and Pyramid Research is forecasting that it will take only take four years for the technology to reach 100 million subscribers (two years quicker than UMTS).  Caroline Gabriel provides a summary of the discussion at the LTE World Summit here, and Zahid Ghadialy provides a more detailed report here.

Motorola backs out of UMTS femtocell market

Unstrung reports that Motorola has stopped its UMTS femtocell product development, and plans to put its femto efforts into CDMA, WiMax and LTE instead.  “With 3G, people are trying to bolt [femtocells] on to a mature, standardized network, and it just doesn’t work as well,” said Paul Steinberg, Motorola fellow and chief architect for home and networks mobility.  However, ABI Research suspects the explanation is that Motorola has simply “missed the boat” with its UMTS femtocell offering, and Mobile Insider suggests that the company has made “a grave mistake”.

Picocells boost capacity at F1 Monaco Grand Prix

Monaco Telecom used nanoGSM® picocells from ip.access to boost network capacity in the press centre at this weekend’s F1 Monaco Grand Prix.  The deal comes on the back of Monaco Telecom’s successful deployment of nanoGSM to service VIP’s, enterprises and hotels in the principality.

Alcatel-Lucent executive forecasts breakneck femto growth

Yannick Dupuch, director of femto product lines at Alcatel-Lucent, says he expects breakneck growth in femtocell equipment sales, with 5-10 million units shipping in 2010.  He also said that Alcatel-Lucent is currently fulfilling femtocell equipment orders from over 20 carriers worldwide, and is looking to establish partnerships with Taiwanese ODMs.

Repeaters causing problems in Holland

The number of complaints about GSM repeaters grew significantly during the last six months in The Netherlands.  According to a spokesman for Agentschap Telecom, improperly installed repeaters are causing failures on the mobile networks.  Mobile operators usually refuse permission for repeater installations, but many are installed illegally.

Airtel offers in-flight service with AeroMobile

Bharti Airtel has partnered with AeroMobile to become the first Indian operator to offer in-flight GSM service to its customers.  But the service is not yet available over Indian Air Space, and will work only in countries where regulatory approval has already been granted.

In other news…

• IDATE says femtocells will generate 875 million euros for service providers by 2013.
• picoChip launches HSPA+ femtocell SoC for eight-user operation.
• This chap is desperate for the ATT 3G Microcell.
• BlackBerry glitch with Sprint’s AIRAVE.
• Airvana CEO says femtocells should be owned by the operator, not the consumer.
• Does a FON commercial model make sense for femtocells?
• S3 completes Integrated Circuit implementation for Percello’s PRC6000 chipset.
• Continuous Computing and picoChip announce collaboration on an LTE femto / picocell reference design.
• picoChip CEO Nigel Toon believes “even femtocell advocates sometimes underestimate the closeness of the symbiosis between [LTE and femtocells]”.
• Some scary (and some daft) comments about femtocells on ZDNet.

From the Tuesday 19 May edition of the Cambridge News (this is not a spoof!).